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Thursday, March 16, 2017

From extraction to regeneration: Food and farming as keys to transformation

Industrial
food and farming is based on practices, principles and mechanisms which are not
compatible with equitable and truly sustainable development, human or planetary
welfare. Since agriculture dominates over 50% of the primary biological
metabolism of the planet’s terrestrial systems and food production is also
shaping the development of the seas and arctic regions, how we manage food
production is essentially how we manage the planet. Almost all major
environmental challenges are strongly linked to our food production system.

Most people
feel a profound discomfort over how their food is produced and how this affects
both the quality of the food and the world we live in. As a response to this
organic farming, fair trade and alike has developed. However, these systems are
by and large still subject to the endless competition in the market place, and
increasingly so the more successful they are, which limits their
transformational power. Real change of our farm and food system must be linked
also to changes in social institutions. Because of the pivotal role of food and
its way of engaging people it is also the best starting point for the building
of such institutions. This has already begun with efforts such as community
supported agriculture, local food movements, participatory guarantee systems
and urban farming.

A truly
regenerative food and farm system will close loops of flow of energy, nutrients
and most importantly meaning and culture. It will also have to reflect the role
of our agriculture system for management of the planet at large. Such a system
can’t be based on the capitalist market’s imperatives of endless competition
and rent-seeking.

This new path
is a one of re-generation and co-production of resources, innovation, knowledge
and meaning embedded in new relationships which to a large extent transcend the
division between producers and consumers imposed on us by a capitalist market
economy. Increasing prices of energy and general discomfort with the results of
globalization will assist in the transformation. Like most earlier profound
transformations of human society it will develop by a mix of new relations and
adaptations of existing components and institutions.